This is the joint website of Women Against Rape and Black Women's Rape Action Project. Both organisations are based on self-help and provide support, legal information and advocacy. We campaign for justice and protection for all women and girls, including asylum seekers, who have suffered sexual, domestic and/or racist violence.

WAR was founded in 1976. It has won changes in the law, such as making rape in marriage a crime, set legal precedents and achieved compensation for many women. BWRAP was founded in 1991. It focuses on getting justice for women of colour, bringing out the particular discrimination they face. It has prevented the deportation of many rape survivors. Both organisations are multiracial.

New figures reveal that police forces are writing off up to one third of all allegations reported to them

Official concern over a "culture of disbelief" in rape cases has been raised as new figures show that some police forces are writing off up to a third of all allegations reported to them.

A report by the high-powered joint government and police rape monitoring group confirms that a postcode lottery is operating in the way the 43 forces in England and Wales deal with rape allegations.

The figures show that the "no crime" rate for adult rape – the rate at which forces dismiss allegations initially recorded as a crime because of later details that emerge about the case – varies from only 3% in Cumbria to 33% in Lincolnshire.

November 19, 2013 by Melanie Newman
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

Victims of rape are being dismissed (Image: Rape by Shutterstock.com)

The Metropolitan Police Service is significantly under-recording rape offences according to new evidence presented to MPs.

The public administration select committee has been told that a large number of rape and other sexual offences are being wrongly categorised, and therefore not included in official crime statistics.

Serving police constable James Patrick, who analysed a sample of allegations made to the Met police force in financial year 2012/2013, said that rapes could have been under-recorded by over 24% and total sexual offences by almost 22%.

The predatory sexual behaviour of police officers ranges from rape to voyeurism. Photograph: Steve Phillips/Alamy
Police forces are being ordered to face up to corruption by officers who commit sexual offences against vulnerable women and young people, as figures obtained by the Guardian reveal 169 officers and support staff are under investigation for predatory sexual behaviour.

Senior officers from the 43 forces of England and Wales have held a high-level private meeting to address the problem of officers who abuse their position to make inappropriate sexual advances or carry out sexual assaults on members of the public, many of whom are victims of crime.

Scotland Yard chief Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe has apologised to victims of rapes who were pressured by police into withdrawing their allegations so officers could meet performance targets.

However, the Met Commissioner faced attack after he attempted to deflect criticism over the issue by saying the cases — which took place in 2008 and 2009 — were “relatively historic”.

His comments came after the Independent Police Complaints Commission severely criticised the force’s Southwark Sapphire specialist sex crimes unit for adopting an approach of “failing to believe” victims.

Their record in rape cases is abysmal – and they seem to resent accountability, preferring to improve PR rather than performance

Lisa Longstaff
theguardian.com, Monday 4 March 2013 09.00 GMT

Allegations of sexual violence and cover-up are threatening every institution. Can rape be dealt with when so many in authority are themselves guilty? Of course it can. But first the police, charged with enforcing the law, must change.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) has investigated London's Sapphire rape units nine times in seven years – that's 19 officers disciplined, three dismissed, one imprisoned for fraudulently closing rape cases and another under investigation.

Seven men will be sentenced for 43 offences – ranging from rape and conspiracy to rape to supplying Class A drugs to using an instrument to procure a miscarriage – against six underage girls. But what about the police officers and social workers whose refusal to act enabled these rapes? Will they be prosecuted for aiding and abetting rape? Were they involved in other ways? Is that why they didn’t act against rape? Or is it their bias against working class children and against rape victims generally?

An investigator from the Metropolitan police specialist sex crimes unit has admitted failing to investigate the alleged rapes and sexual assaults of 12 women by faking police reports, failing to pass on forensic evidence and not interviewing suspects.